"Schools to select pupils by lottery"

lskinner · July 4, 2007, 12:20pm

I don’t think that you can legally stop people from sending their children to parochial school. I would think it’s a matter of religious freedom.

So if (by some miracle) somebody implemented forced busing and also prohibited wealthy parents from sending their children to private school, what would happen is that the Catholic kids would end up going to Catholic school, the Jewish kids would go to Jewish school, and so on.

Whether or not forced busing is a good idea in principle, in practice, a lot of parents will do just about anything to keep their children out of a school they consider undesirable.

Personally, I can say that I would emigrate if necessary to avoid having my children force-bused to a lousy school.

higherlead · July 4, 2007, 6:03pm

“I don’t think that you can legally stop people from sending their children to parochial school.”

Of course you can. The law says you have to send your kid to school and it has to be a school that meets state defined curriculum and accreditation standards. You can unaccreditate all private schools. It would be easier to do for the parochial ones than the others.

The only reason the liberals haven’t done it already is because it saves the state a lot of money, and provides the rich liberals with an alternative when their social experiments go totally awry. You didn’t see Carter or Clinton or Gore sending their kids to a DC public high school did you? They prefer to perform their social experiments with the other 90% of society.

I can take you to any of the $20K+ a year private day schools around DC and introduce you to the children of the most “progressive” folks in town. These folks want racial diversity, but they also want their minorities to either be from the same socio-economic class as themselves or else carefully vetted (interesting the etymology of that word). Their kids then go from Sidwell Friends to some elite LAC or Ivy and consider anyone who doesn’t want to live in the middle of warring drug gangs or next to a day labourer pickup spot to be a NAZI.

I think we ought to make them walk the walk. Close Sidwell Friends, Georgetown Prep, and St. Alban’s and bus the faculty and students to the most disadvantaged schools in the region. Oh and charge them the same tuition for the privilege. It can be a start on reparations.

epiphany · July 4, 2007, 10:17pm

“The law says you have to send your kid to school and it has to be a school that meets state defined curriculum and accreditation standards.”

Hmmm. Well not in my state. You can declare yourself a “school” even in your own home, with nothing official attached to that, no defined standards. You merely file the appropriate paperwork, & no one can dictate to you what to teach, how to teach it, what tests to take, what books to read. It protects a student against truancy charges to have this official designation. Originally, this is what “homeschool” was.

Now, however, since many homeschool graduates also want a college education in a competitive admissions field, such families prefer to be aligned with state standards, often including being formally enrolled in ‘public charter homeschools,’ and these indeed are usually accredited, or on their way to becoming within a year or two of charter approval. And they’re funded by the State (though grossly underfunded, with bare staff, no perks, nonunionized teachers, no job security, & job performance based on administration of the chartered ‘program,’ not on quality, level, success of teaching.) As you can see, still a public school, with all the administrative priorities & bureaucratic downsides, too often.

On the point about the wealthy officials & where their children go to school, I wholeheartedly agree. In my state, this means that the state officials, who decide public school policy, have very little stake (usually) in the outcomes of those policies & the distribution/allocation of funds. Virtually all of them have children attending privates or very well-heeled publics in high-priced residential areas, with large property taxes supporting few schools, & with add’l fundraising & donations provided by these same wealthy families.

lskinner · July 4, 2007, 10:31pm

Easy until the parents and parochial schools marched into federal court and got an injunction ordering that the accreditation be restored.

higherlead · July 4, 2007, 11:54pm

“Easy until the parents and parochial schools marched into federal court and got an injunction ordering that the accreditation be restored.”

On what grounds? Education is a state responsibility not a federal one. The state can set whatever standards it wants. As long as it applies them evenly there is no federal issue. If a state wants to say no private schools there is no federal issue. If the state wants to say no standards at all as epiphany says they do in his/her state again no problem at all.

lskinner · July 5, 2007, 6:28am

Free exercise and due process I should think.

That’s not true. For example, if the state passed a law closing down all churches, mosques, synagogues, and other houses of worship, it would clearly violate the federal constitution.

And note that you’ve changed your position – earlier you wanted to ban private school only for children from families with high income or assets. Now you want to completely ban it for everyone.

Finally, how will you prevent people from simply moving out of the state to avoid your policies?

Chedva · July 5, 2007, 8:32am

The First Amendment free exercise of religion clause stops states from closing down parochial schools.

States have also gone into court to try to forbid “home schooling”; they cannot. They can enact reasonable regulations, but they cannot bar home schooling or make it overly burdensome to meet those regulations.

Another legal argument by higherlead, who clearly has no clue what he’s talking about when it comes to the law.

padad · July 5, 2007, 10:53am

Aside from all that have been raised already, Montessori schools operate in virtually all states and the operation clearly falls under federal jurisdiction of interstate commerce.

I might add that his/her Latin is wanting as well.

Just let it go higherlead is playing with you.

lskinner · July 5, 2007, 12:16pm

By the way, I did a little research and came upon the case of

Pierce v. Society of Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, 268 U.S. 510 (1925).

In that case, the Supreme Court apparently struck down an Oregon statute requiring all students in Oregon to attend public school. And that was a unanimous decision that came down more than 80 years ago.

conyat · July 5, 2007, 9:28pm

One thing Catholic schools are NOT is a bastion of privilege for the wealthy or for white flight.

First off, nation-wide, Catholic schools have an 88% acceptance rate. Second, their racial diversity is about the same as the rest of the country. This is also true on the local scale; the student population of Catholic schools reflects the neighborhoods where the schools are. A Catholic school in a Hispanic, low income neighborhood tends to have Hispanic, low income students.

Back when I used to ride the public bus through low income neighborhoods in New Orleans, the busses in the morning and afternoon were filled with kids from those neighborhoods, en route to or from Catholic schools. This was a tradition going back generations in some families, to well before WWII. Some parents, I guess, dug deep; others I know for a fact got very generous scholarships.

After Katrina, the Archdiocese of New Orleans had schools up and running before the government did. Even though they lost a good many of their paying families, they said: any child who wants to go to school can come, regardless of ability to pay. When the public schools opened, they continued to educate these children; they didn’t ask them to move over to the public schools. And when the public schools ran out of room and teachers, and were putting kids on a waiting list (something like 400 of them), the Archdiocese offered to take each and every one of them, regardless of ability to pay.

higherlead · July 5, 2007, 11:01pm

Generally speaking conyat is correct about Catholic parochial schools however there are Catholic schools not directly tied to parishes and in my part of the country some of these are both very expensive and very selective. These schools do not discriminate on the basis of race or religion but they do defacto discriminate on the basis of economic class.

The large majority of parochial schools take whoever is in the parish gladly and frequently others as well. And yes they did a very good job getting back up and running in post-Katrina New Orleans, a lot better than the public schools.

Hanna · July 6, 2007, 11:05am

“These extra complications are hard to use and hard to observe, especially across the population when implementing policy or performing studies.”

There’s a huge population out there of truly single parents where the other parent is emotionally and financially absent. In fact, most states keep registries of families where there’s a multi-year backlog of unpaid child support, which is an excellent proxy for absentee parenting. That population is therefore easy to locate and frequently studied. It’s also very easy to track births to women under age 18, single-parent families on public assistance, and other truly at-risk family populations.

“So with family law we have to concern ourselves with the more likely outcomes rather than the exceptional ones.”

What family law are you proposing here? Taking children away from unmarried people?

epiphany · July 6, 2007, 1:48pm

The reason, of course, that “the student population of Catholic schools reflect the neighborhoods where the schools are” is that eligibility for that school is first of all tied to parish enrollment, in most cases. If there is room at that school for non-parishioners, then they can apply. At the parochial schools in the wealthier neighborhoods, though, it is rarely true that there are open spots for nonparishioners, so parochial schools, in the definition of neighborhood parish, are the most economically segregated of all types of private schools.

There is an additional category of Catholic school called the Catholic independent school. They are titularly tied to a diocese or archdiocese, but are not parish-bound in terms of admissions, and their curriculum is freed from the requirements of the diocesan curriculum plan – not just in the religion curriculum, but in everything else. Their admissions, as higherlead mentions, are quite selective and quite similar to the secular privates with which they bear a much greater resemblance than ‘parochial’ schools. The academics are more rigorous than that of the well-heeled parochials, and among the high schools, the college admissions results also reinforce that. Like the secular privates, they are far more diverse, racially & economically, than parochial schools, because they are not neighborhood bound, & because they have diversity policies.

Yes, those is low-income parochial schools sacrifice much for those schools, and yes, there are scholarship options there. I’m fairly sure that that is one reason why the facilities at these lower-end schools are not of the same quality as the wealthier parochials. It wouldn’t just be parent fundraising. It would be that whatever money is available from the school & diocese, tends to go toward financial aid rather than toward facilities improvement. This is actually a major beef of mine. I find it quite contradictory that our local Catholic diocese makes such a big deal about “community service” outside the parish, while the local low-income Catholic schools are in wretched shape, physically. They use funds from various parish & diocesan-wide drives to spruce up houses in other local poor neighborhoods, and don’t spend a dime on painting a school which looks like something from the South Bronx in the 70’s. Shame on them.

lskinner · July 8, 2007, 10:11am

Whether they are elite or not, you can’t stop parents from sending their children to private or parochial schools. Thus, any plan to improve lousy schools by forcing certain children to attend wouldn’t even have a chance to succeed. (I doubt it would succeed even if everyone went along with it.)

cartera45 · July 8, 2007, 11:11am

I agree lskinner - there would always be a way around it. I have thought that , in theory, outlawing private schools would be a positive thing, but it would have needed to have been done at the federal level many years ago and I know that was not going to happen.I based my opnion on my growing up close to Prince Edward County Virginia, where the local school system chose to shut down for 5 years rather than integrate. I thought at the time that, had the white parents not been able to start a private school, it wouldn’t have happened. I didn’t find out until years later that there was a effort by many parents in my county to shut down the schools too.

conyat · July 8, 2007, 11:35am

If you outlawed private schools, you’d add substantially to the burden on the taxpayers who would now be on the hook for educating more students. And you’d have pushback from the taxpayers without school age kids.

Then there’s the issue of teachers. There aren’t enough HQT (highly qualified teachers) to teach the kids we have now in the public schools. (And “highly” is used very loosely in some districts). I’m pretty sure that private and parochial schools as a group have a lower % of certified teachers than publics do.

epiphany · July 8, 2007, 12:43pm

“I’m pretty sure that private and parochial schools as a group have a lower % of certified teachers than publics do.”

This is true, at least in my State, which requires a credential for public school teaching of anything academic, including resource teaching. Since until recently there have been far more credentialed teachers than open spots available, I was surprised to see just this week some postings for Catholic school classroom positions not requiring a credential. However, there appears to be something of a shortage now, as baby-boomer teachers are retiring, and as another million of them are disgusted at the preference of the system for the teaching, as well as a whole host of other circumstances & conditions in the environment. Most people originally go into teaching for the love of the activity, hardly for the money. When the activity is no longer enjoyable or fulfilling, or the position begins to resemble that of a mis-titled administrator, there’s little incentive to stay, esp. when there are more fulfilling or enjoyable options out there. You’d think that the PTB would get a clue. Nah.

Sorry for that aside. ^^ Seriously, it is best to keep many educational options open. This helps to relieve pressure on any one option. While I do not favor any centralized educational system that operates with the kind of priorities & the size & diversity of populations & regions that mine does, if one is going to keep such a system, better that it serve a smaller population, not a bigger one. So in staying alive, private schools make it possible for the public system to improve, as it means they would be serving a smaller population. So far, the attrition rate at the publics should have theoretically improved the delivery of education to those remaining, should have helped to improve service, but it hasn’t. The reason? The State is fundamentally in love with itself, its power, its thirst for Control. They exercise something of an iron grip over charter schools, by withholding funding to an absurd degree, by creating performance standards not required for non-charter schools, etc., and by telling them whom they can and cannot include in their schools.

Really creative thinkers understand that it is still possible to dismantle an out-of-control bureaucracy without denying its citizens a free public education. There are many options, but not without the State letting go. At this point (given where we are), I believe in the complete privatization of secular schools, with the same (at least) level of governmental funding that is currently enjoyed, to be apportioned to smaller regions or individual schools relative to the gap between available property tax revenues and the size of that school or region or district. The only thing the gov’t should be insisting on is a basic compliance with areas such as physical safety, public health, nondiscrimination, and accommodation, such as making available to students who need it, SpecEd resources of a basic nature (as opposed to the elaborate multiplication of resources now available, many of which are not necessary & quite wasteful).

As to job security & job performance standards for teachers, that is something that would not be handled by unions, but by professional boards (not political boards). Those boards would consist of those recommended to it by senior educators of superior competency & impeccable peer reputation, as people of integrity & without political agendas.

The government really does need to get out of the business of micro-managing people’s educational lives. Many moons ago, when I was a child, my State had a minimal & appropriate role in my education. It is now a monster, i.m.o., with a stranglehold that has suffocated the talent out of fine teachers and some very fine principals as well. If I wanted to apply for a government job, I would certainly apply to one that’s twice as well paying, for the same or less amount of work, than teaching. Why would I want the worst of both worlds?

lskinner · July 8, 2007, 12:45pm

Bit of a tangent, but I bet if you took a lousy public school; put in a dedicated and competent principal; and gave him the power to boot 12% of each year’s class, you’d end up with a school that wasn’t so lousy anymore.

conyat · July 8, 2007, 12:49pm

You raise a good point; one of the biggest benefits of a non-public school isn’t the ability to reject; it’s the ability to EJECT.

epiphany · July 8, 2007, 12:53pm

skinner, this is limiting the problem of “lousiness” to the students. The lousiness is much more related to a depersonalized system which removes decision-making ability from the school (& the principal), than to the supposed incompetence of the students.

And btw, as a teacher I would prefer there to be behavioral standards for lousiness, not academic ones. Give me an adequately behaved but poorly performing student any day, over one more capable but with obnoxious behavior. Principals have few options now when it comes to dismissing students, regardless of the level of behavior. (A student practically has to become consistently violent with severe injury, to be expelled.)

"Schools to select pupils by lottery"

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